Interviewing for Life-Histories, Lived Periods and Situations

Contents Pages

Interviewing for life-histories, lived periods and situations,

and ongoing personal experiencing using the

Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM):

the BNIM Short Guide bound with the BNIM Detailed Manual

Or is the latter becoming a Monstrous Encyclopedia? [Yes!][Sorry!]

This revision is dated 17 April 2013 . version 2013c

[474,770 words;1,700 pages]

Tom Wengraf

(ex) Honorary Research Fellow

Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, London University, UK

If this is your first encounter with BNIM,

then look only at………... the BNIM Short Guide:………

i.e. please ignore roughly 80% or more ofthis text,

i.e, about some 1,000 pages or more out of these 1,200…… ignore them!

The rest, the BNIM Detailed Manual and Appendicestakes up that 80%, those c.1000 pages. The detail there is only relevant for those who have read the BNIM Short Guide (10%) and, after thinking about it, have decided they want to know more about some particular detail that concerns them at the moment. The Detailed Manual is a Manual for practice, not a continuous text and introduction. In fact, much to my alarm, it’s becoming more like a BNIM Encyclopedia!

Until you need it, -- NO, until you need one or other highly particular bitof it , -- ..

keep off the ‘Detailed Manual’ and its appendices !

Please cite this document this as:

“Tom Wengraf. 2013. BNIM Short Guide bound with the BNIM Detailed Manual. Interviewing for life-histories, lived periods and situations, and ongoing personal experiencing using the

Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) Version date. For a free updated version, write to ”.

If you are not too happy with beginning with too many generalities:

Go to the next page for the

Short Guide : Brief Table of Contents (2 pages)

Then, for an example of BNIM interviewing

1.1.3. Kathy, Sally, the purple sweater, and the driving test,

Or to the section.’Why bring BNIM into your research? p. 57

SHORTEST TECHNICAL READ start with 1.3.7; or

Ignore all the rest and jump to section section 1.8.1. p. 210.

You can always return to (“Start Here”)p. 47 later.

[The WORD ‘Document Map/Navigation Pane’ is handy for fast navigation]

Contents Pages

The BNIM handbooks series now consists of five separate volumes. These can be uploaded separately and read as one master document or, alternatively, you can upload each one as you need it.

The five separate volumes are as follows :

I. The Short Guide

II. Detailed Manual: BNIM Interviewing

III. Detailed Manual: Interpretation

IV. Interpretation Further Appendices

V. Bibliographies, Trainings, etc.

For the first 10 years, the SGDM was a single volume. It has now got so large that it is being recast into the above five volumes from early-2013 to early-2014.

So, until Easter 2014, there may be difficulties in using the text because revising such a large project (over 1,500 pages) cannot be done all-at-once.

Since the revision is ongoing – and I hope your feedback will enable it to be done better and faster – please be patient with absurdities and incoherences.

Please let us know of any problems you have with the text, even if it’s only two lines in an email…… Given your feedback, it should be OK by 2014.

Tom

.

Contents Pages

I. SHORT GUIDE: TABLE OF CONTENTS

Short Guide volume I: Draft Contents

(use Navigation Panel for up-to-date info)

Figures and Tables

1. 1. Focus

1.1.1. Some quotes and discussion

1.1.2. Situations and the ‘dated situated perspectives’ of a given moment

1.1.3. Kathy, Sally, the purple sweater, and the driving test,

#1.2. Technical Notes. Using the Guide, and then maybe the Manuals, thoughtfully#

1.2.1. SGDM and the 2001 QRI textbook

1.2.2. Growth of BNIM Detailed Manuals II-V

1.2.3. Footnotes and the 5 volumes as dated assemblings

1.2.4. Using SGDM as a whole

1.2.5. Technical note on cross-references in the text

1.2.6. Volume references and trans-volume references

1.2.7. End of technical notes

1.3. Start here

1.3.1 Introduction

1.3.2. Given where you are in your research, why might you want to bring in BNIM?

1.3.3. What are the assumptions and uses of the method?

1.3.3.1. Characteristic BNIM concerns

1.3.3.2. Labov’s ‘narrow’ notion of narrative is core

1.3.4. How and where has the method been used and taught?

1.3.4.1. Where?

1.3.4.2. MAs, PhDs and professional doctorates

1.3.4.3. Collective post-doctoral research projects using BNIM

1.3.4.4. BNIM in triangulated ‘applied’ research

1.3.4.4.1. More than one separate BNIM interview in a team

1.3.4.4.2. Program/ organisational evaluation: a note.

1.3.4.4.3. Triangulation by 3-category (multi-category) interviewing?

1.3.4.4.4. Triangulation by more than just one type of interview

1.3.4.4.5. Triangulation with more than just interviews

1.3.4.5. When NOT to use the method – counter-indications….

1.3.4.5.1. Are there types of people who should not be (BNIM) interviewed?

1.3.4.5.2. Are there types of research purpose for which BNIM interviewing is a bad idea?

1.3.4.5.3. Are you a type of person who should not do BNIM research?

1.3.5. BNIM Resources other than this Guide

1.3.5.1. Trainings and individual tutorial feedback

1.3.5.1.1. BNIM ‘Tasters’ and 5-day training courses

1.3.5.1.2. Further Tutorial Feedback Facility (on drafts up to case-account level)

1.3.5.2. Textbook + complementary BNIM resources

1.3.5.3. Other non-BNIM resources

1.3.6. Tutored Self-Training, this Guide and this Manual

1.3.6.1. Learning about an artificial practice from a text?

1.3.6.2. Tutored Self-training in interviewing – 2 practice interviews

1.3.6.3.Tutored Self-training in interpretation

1.3.6.4. Introduction to the structure of this Guide

1.3.7. Relation of BNIM interpreting to BNIM interviewing material

1.4. The BNIM three-Sub-sessions interview- brief account

1.4.1. Preparing the first two sub-sessions

1.4.2. Throughout both sub-sesssions: Making notes of ‘narratable items’.

1.4.3. Sub-session One: SQUIN + no new questions or comments

1.4.4. Necessary Interlude: choosing narratable cue-phrases, selecting a magic word for each

1.4.5. Differences between the first two sub-sessions

1.4.6. Sub-session Two: PINs pushing pausefully for PINs

1.4.6.1. Pushing pausefully for PINs in subsession two

1.4.6.1.1. Pushing towards PINs

1.4.6.1..2. Pausefully

1.4.6.2. . It doesn’t matter so much what the PIN is about…

1.4.6.3. You need the non-PIN stuff that you will inevitably also get

1.4.7. Immediate de –briefing of both of you

1.4.7.1. Informal debriefing of interviewee after subsession two

1.4.7.2. Determined self-debriefing of interviewer

1.4.8.The Optional Third Subsession – a ?week? later

1.5. The BNIM two-track chunk-by-chunk future-blind interpretation procedures – brief account

1.5.1. Introduction

1.5.1.1. Why two tracks, and not just one?

1.5.1.2. The ‘single datum’ or ‘jerky historical data’ approach?

1.5.1.3. Periodising the interview, not just the life..

1.5.1.4. Part-to-whole BNIM approach – two stages

1.5.2. What are the two preparatory tracks?

1.5.3. Kick-start panels, chunk by chunk, future-blind chunks

1.5.3.1. Overview

1.5.3.2. Constant revising hypotheses of ‘historical subjectivity in action’ hypotheses

1.5.3.3. Track One: Using hard BD Chronology to Interpret the living of the lived life (BDC to BDA)

1.5.3.3.1 Why bother with ‘objective data’? Why not go straight to story?

1.5.3.3.2. BDA Procedures in/after the kickstart panel

1.5.5.4. Imagining alternative ways of telling

1.5.3.5. Track Two: Perspectives Data Analysis (TFA)

1.5.3.3.4.1. Sequentialising the transcript into segments

1.5.3.3.4.2. How is the sequentialisation used?

1.5.3.3.4.3. Teller Flow Analysis (TFA)

1.5.3.3.4.4. After the TFA panel

1.5.3.3.3.5. Additional micro-analyses of puzzling verbatim transcript segments

1.5.3.3.5. Track Two Perspectives Data Analysis: (SSS)

1.5.3.3.6. Keeping panel work and writing columns ‘pure’

1.5.4.Structural hypotheses: separate structural hypotheses between and within tracks

1.6. The Case-Account for your CRQ: after the preparatory work

1.7. Comparing several cases – Generalising and Particularising Theory (GPT)

1.8. Key principles in a couple of pages

1.8.1. Key principles of BNIM Three-Sub-session interviewing

1.8.2. Key principles of BNIM Twin-track future-blind initial interpretation procedure

1.9. Some extra notes

1.9.1. Interviewing as ethnographic participant- observation: a note

1.9.2. A full Psycho-Societal and ‘Glocal Contradictions’ approach?

1.10. Tom Wengraf - Lenka Formankova’s practice semi-BNIM interview –

#1.11. Technical Notes: Differences of this 2013 update from earlier versions#

1.11.1 Introduction to Technical Notes on Differences

1.11.2. TFA Terminology. October 2010 +. I am currently changing terminology.

1.11.3. Preparing for BNIM (Teams of 1 or more, say , say 4)

1.11.4. Appendices on ‘Variants and Adaptions’ of and around BNIM

1.11.5. The BNIM interview – push for ‘Pauses’ as you push for ‘(in)-PINs’ and foster Free-Associative Leaps

1.11.5.1. Push pausefully …. Think mini-moments within broader sweeps

1.11.5.2. and…foster unprompted free-associative leaps:Anything else come to mind?

1.11.6. The BNIM interpretation process – new emphases and additions

1.11.7. More examples of ‘writing up’ the various stages in different ways

1.11.8. McGilchrist’s ‘divided brain’; and the pleasure of practices

1.11.9. Technical Notes: conclusion

1.12. Short Bibliography for Short Guide

Contents Pages

What follows this ‘1. Short Guide’?

The "Detailed Manuals / Encyclopedia"

These are only for consulting one section at a time

II. “BNIM INTERVIEWING”

III. “BNIM INTERPRETATION”

like any encyclopedia

not designed as something to be read through

THEN

The Appendices and Essays at the end of (II) and in (IV)

are even less designed as a single unit.

They

should also be read

topic-by-topic.

Together, the Appendices and Essays make up the longest section

in the 1,500 pages

THEN: V. ‘Bibliographies and BNIM Trainings’

The Guide/Manual, your feedback, and BNIM training

This Short Guide (and the later Extremely Detailed Manuals on ‘BNIM Interviewing’ and on ‘BNIM Interpretation’) is dedicated to all those from whom I learned about BNIM – in particular to Prue Chamberlayne -- and to all those BNIM trainees and researchers whose work continues to nourish new trainees and researchers partly through the medium of this constantly-updated Guide.

Withoutnew questions, new feedback publications and new accounts of the lived experience of BNIM-reading and BNIM-doing, there would be nothing new for me to write in, and no further learning from, this evolving Short Guide and the later Detailed Manuals.

So this Short Guide and the later Detailed Manuals are also dedicated to you in the hope that you will share your experiencing in the reading and using of theShort Guide and the Detailed Manual’s current edition to enrich the next edition for others.

So send in accounts of your experience (positive and negative) and questions and comments to .

Or directly to me at .

Figures and Tables

This Short Guide and the Detailed Manuals, and the BNIM 5-day intensive training:

read it before/instead of/ the training!

Chapters 6 and 12 of the textbook (Wengraf 2001) were written to make it possible for researchers to acquire the basics of BNIM without doing a training course. This Short Guide and the Detailed Manuals have been written so as to make it even easier to acquire the basics -- and also viable for researchers to reach a good level -- without such a training course, but in conjunction with the textbook.

However, we do run trainings to run as complements to both textbook and the Detailed Manuals.

Figures and Tables

If you have registered for a 5-day training or might register in the future, please bear the following in mind:

Our original training in BNIM took 9 days; the current intensive model takes 5 days. Among the reasons for being able to shorten the time is that the ‘exposition’ part of the 9 day training has now been very largely encapsulated in the textbook and in thistext. Briefly, it originally took 9 days to train people; now, with the Detailed Manuals, it takes 5 days (see p.1415 onwards for a description and schedule of the 5-day training).

But you have to have done the reading for the 5-day training to work properly!

Somebody on a recent training said, around day 4 of the five days, something like

“I felt fully on top of all the learning by doing until just now. However, today, we’re now getting beyond the point to which I read the Guide, and I’m feeling much less confident and getting much less from the exercises….. I should have finished my preparatory reading!”.

I’m glad to say that by the end of the 5 days he had managed to cope with the temporarily-lowered quality caused by his incomplete reading of the Guide, and was feeling fine. But the point remains. I said “With the Guide, it takes 5 days”; it might be better to say “To get the best out of the 5-day course, you need to have read the key bits of the Guide beforehand”.

The 5-day Intensive does have brief expositions of theory to explain the key points as you proceed, but only as reminders of the ‘gist’ of previous reading of this Short Guide and some of the Detailed Manuals. [The intensive also provides intermittent open plenaries for discussion of points of difficulty as they arise].

So:

• although you can get a considerable amount from an intensive even if you only have read the ‘brief overview’ beforehand, and just perhaps scanned sections 2 and 3,

• the 5-days will work most effectively for you if you have prepared yourself by having had a serious look at, and preferably read, sections 1-3. When after a training, you read it in the course of practice, the bits that are relevant for each stage of that practice, you will get still more.

Your predominantly ‘learning-by-doing’ on the 5 day course

depends for its effectiveness…

….on your previous ‘preparation-by-reading’.

And then afterwards practising, and

Therefore getting more from reading the manual

post-practice!

Figures and Tables

Figures and Tables

Figure 1 Labov's model of narrative

Figure 2 Choosing a SQUIN for the practice interviews + 3 sub-session

Figure 3 Two axes of pushing for in-PINs

Figure 4 BNIM Twin-Track Interpretation Model

Figure 5 Non-identical concepts of HiSS derived from two tracks

Figure 7 Lola: 3-column diagram example

Figure 8 A Glocal Subsystems Contradictions image

Figure 9 Glocal Time Line Matrix

Figure 10 Successive States of Subjectivity - rough example

Author’s note to author:

Add-

From Old Appendix

1. BNIM-SQUIN

2. TWIN TRACKS

3. SOME EXAMPLE OF TELLER FLOW ANALYSIS (e.g. Gabriele?)

From vol. III or my ESS-NOTES

1.1. Focus

I. Overview – Short Guide

1. 1. Focus

The Guide and Manual

“is the most complete set of information I have ever found on this theme and I hang onto it (email Anita Pincas, Institute of Education, London October 2008)”

The ShortGuide part of this text is quite sufficient for a broad understanding of the method.

The Short Guide is quite short; the Detailed Manualsarevery very detailed.

The Short Guide can be read as a whole.

TheDetailed Manuals are like an Encyclopedia of Timed Practice.

Only read each section of the Detailed Manualsat the time when you are engaging in the practice that the particular section is about.Just like a Car Maintenance manual.

Why bother? A quick route to getting at the significance of those procedures might be to look through the 'examples' ofwhat sort of different 'writings-up' emerge -- from them -- (BDA section 3.3.4; TFA sections 3.5/5.. 3/5.6. , Mutations of the Case section 3.6.2.)

BUT:

If you eventually intend to use all of the BNIM approach professionally,

please bear in mind that you will need both this Short Guideand the Detailed Manuals, and also the textbook that they are designed to complement, namely Tom Wengraf (2001) Qualitative research interviewing: biographic narrative and semi-structured method. London: Sage Publications

However, the good news!

You can do BNIM interviewingjust on the basis of the relevant sections of this BNIM Guide andDetailed Manual on BNIM Interviewing, plus Appendix A. That’s about 120 pages, plus the Appendix A. Quite manageable.

You can decide later whether you want to explore the BNIM interpretive apparatus, or not. At least half the users of BNIM interviewing procedure don’t. They use other interpretive methodologies. And, for many purposes, but not for others, that’s fine!

The following remarks will make more sense once you have grappled with the account of BNIM interviewing and interpretation. BNIM has a strong ‘one thing at a time, delay the’ getting everything together moment’ until later’ principle.

One feature characterises some of the features of both BNIM interviewing and of BNIM interpreting: this is the separation out into different ‘moments’of the procedures for doing things which are – in most semi-structured interview methods and interpretation methods -- more often done together in a ‘fused’ wayright from the start -- a ‘fusion’ which can become, without always realising it, a con-fusion.

You could think of BNIM-work as ‘a holism which is deliberately delayed -- but very carefully prepared-for -- by careful previous provisional disaggregation and anti-holisms’.[1]

1) Interviewingwith separate sub-sessions – what is the point of separation?

Most semi-structured interviewing method allow the interviewer to ‘insert’ their requests for clarification, for more detail, even their personal responses and interpretations at any point that feels ‘right’. BNIM demands that no such ‘insertions’ at all be made during Sub-session One, and very firmly restricts what the interviewer can do in Sub-session Two.

BNIM’s Power to Unpack Short Initial Narratives

One worry that people (interviewers and interviewees) have about not providing a semi-structured set of questions is that the response to an open-narrative question might be very short. The interviewee might ‘dry up’. This does happen.

A very short BNIM Interview Sub-session One:

Ann: Can you tell me your life story, the events and experiences that are important to you? Begin wherever you like. I won’t interrupt. I’ll just take some notes.

Sara:

Well, I got this house, an’ then I, whay, I fell pregnant. Then I got this house. Then I had (baby), so wi’ bein’ so young, I didn’t really have a chance to get a job. I went back to school and done a bit, a bit more, to add on to me ermm results that I got, me GCSEs. An’ then I fell pregnant, so I, I left school, an’ then I ermm got this house, an’ then I had (baby), but (laughed) that’s about it really (laughed).